Asleep at the wheel again

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ONCE AGAIN appears to have been caught off guard by an explosion of violence in a country US forces helped liberate as Baghdad is threatened by well-armed Al Qaeda-aligned militants who already have overrun the northern Iraq cities of Mosul and Tikrit — confirming the ‘worst fears’ of Republican lawmakers and military analysts about the Obama-ordered US troop withdrawal in 2011.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Thursday that the current national security team is a “failure,” urging President Obama to get a “new team.” He also took a shot at Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying: “We need a new chairman.”

The escalating violence follows repeated assurances by the Obama administration that Al Qaeda is “on the run” and that its offshoots are not the threat they’re made out to be.

As recently as Monday, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said of the situation in northern Iraq, “I don’t get the sense that they’re gaining a lot of territory.”

Obama also brushed off concerns about Al Qaeda affiliates during an interview with The New Yorker, in a piece published in January.

“If a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms, that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” the president said. That was in regard to concerns, at the time, that Islamist militants had taken over Fallujah — the comment also followed Islamist militants overrunning the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, killing four Americans.

Yet in Iraq, militants with ISIS have made considerable gains since January. (They were listed in 2004 by the State Department as a terrorist organization under their old name, Al Qaeda in Iraq, shortly after the group formed.)

More From FoxNews: